A Coach’s Terrible Super Bowl Mistake

Pete Carroll, the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, on the sidelines during Super Bowl XLIX.

Photograph by Gregory Payan / AP

Pete Carroll, the Seahawks coach, was a yard away from winning the Super Bowl. There were less than thirty seconds left to play, and he had the two-legged vortex Marshawn Lynch in his backfield. Yet, instead of remaining grounded, Carroll chose to throw. The Patriots rookie defensive back Malcolm Butler, not long ago employed at Popeyes, recognized the pass route from his opposition film studies. He veered in front of Seahawks receiver Ricardo Lockette to intercept the quarterback Russell Wilson’s pass. The Patriots won, 28-24. For Pete’s sake, coach, you over-think it now?

Lying in bed later, I had Pete Carroll on my mind. Others were similarly sleepless over the Seattle coach, and from time to time my telephone would vibrate with their desultory communications: “You have the best power back in football and you pass?” That sort of thing.

When I recall other terrible strategic decisions in sports, they are usually from baseball. Often it’s Red Sox managers failing to substitute, deaf to an entire region of the country shouting at the TV, “Don’t do this!” In football, especially the Super Bowl, we are more inclined to recall the little infamies of individual players: Jackie Smith, of the Cowboys, dropping a soft pass in the end zone like a brown bag of groceries falling through his arms; the tiny Dolphins kicker Garo Yepremian recovering a blocked field goal and, in a panic, attempting to pass; the Cowboys lineman Leon Lett recovering a fumble and, as he neared the end zone after a long sprint, slowing to savor the moment only to have it snatched from him—along with the ball. It’s somewhere wide of decency to mention another woebegone kicker, so we’ll pull the curtain of charity across the 1991 booter for the Bills.

As I thought about it through the night, it occurred to me there was some justice in the current debacle. More than in any other spectator sport, football is won or lost by coaching—the game plan is the covert blueprint on which so much depends. Yet rarely do the consequences redound to the headset wearer and his designs; usually, it’s the players who are blamed. Even last night, young Butler had been all but measured for that unfortunate mantle. Just two plays before the climax, he had deflected a long pass to the Seattle receiver Jermaine Kearse, only to watch, eyes wide, as the ball, like the knife of a rookie turkey carver, bounced from drumstick to thigh to wing before settling in at Kearse’s breast. Butler travelled a bumpy road to the professional league: after various stays at a Mississippi community college, he was undrafted out of West Alabama. His Patriots teammates call him “Scrap.” Football is a cruel game, and throughout this Super Bowl there had been premonitions of something discomforting—all those advertisements about tormented children. When Kearse made his reception, I remembered Super Bowl X, with the Steelers and Lynn Swann strafing poor Mark Washington, of the Cowboys. But then Butler was rescued: the coach did it.

The job of football coaches is to create strategic expectations in the opposition and then suddenly betray them. Bill Belichick and the Patriots were the masters of this all season, delivering a shiv of trickery at unexpected moments. Yet sometimes, at crucial intervals, it’s best to follow the great Vince Lombardi, whose Packers would call what they did best: running plays. The Seahawks, too, are known for their prowess afoot. They didn’t have to go with Lynch; anyone would have understood a fake to the surging back and a scamper around end by the nimble quarterback Wilson. But to pass? “Always play to your strength,” came another vexed text, this one from an N.F.L. coach.

Carroll is said to be an upstanding man. He did not blame his offensive coördinator, Darrell Bevell, but instead took full responsibility in the aftermath of this year’s game, admitting, “That’s my fault totally.” Carroll explained that before the snap the Patriots had clogged the middle, and, since the Seahawks had inserted multiple receivers at the flank, it seemed prudent to throw. “I hate that we have to live with that,” he said. So do those of us who, like me, are perhaps a bit too sensitive about the big public humiliations that sports figures endure. At 4:56 A.M., my phone buzzed again, this time with a message from another N.F.L. coach: “Worst coaching decision. Ever.”